Startup| Entrepreneurship | Zomato
10-Minute Food Delivery? What’s The Strategy?
Will the idea work?
On 16th March 2022, Zomato announced the acquisition of the low-price online supermarket Blinkit(formerly Grofers) which provides grocery delivery under 10 minutes for $725 million. With the growing heat of 10-minute delivery among the startups, Zomato recently announced Zomato Instant where the company plans to deliver food to people under record 10 minutes. Discontinuing the delivery of groceries in 2020, Zomato plans to enter the quick-commerce space after the acquisition of Blinkit. Last year, Zomato invested $100 million in Blinkit for a 9.3% stake in the company but a potential merger was already in the works for Deepinder Goyal, founder of Zomato.
Zomato Instant
Zomato plans to pilot its new service Zomato Instant. On 24th March 2022, Zomato bought a 16.66% stake in the food robotics firm Mukunda Foods for $5 million. Zomato’s plan to deliver food in under 10 minutes will be facilitated by the other two startups — Blinkit and Mukunda Foods. While Blinkit will be focusing on the 10-minute delivery, Mukunda Foods will facilitate the cooking process with its R&D(Research and Development) and manufacturing of products. With the technological leap in the kitchen, this hardware startup will help the Quick-Service restaurants and cloud kitchens in the automation of the cooking process.
Strategical Delivery
Zomato’s new service will supply easy-to-deliver products like tea, burgers, and biryani, among other things. The founder of Zomato Deepinder Goyal also stated that the company will be focusing on popular brands and their famous 20–30 dishes which are easily dispatched within 2 minutes. While they are piloting this service, Zomato has planned to open the four stations in Gurugram from April. They’ll collaborate closely with their partner restaurants to put up stations in high-demand client areas with a strong network of QSRs.
The need of piloting the 10-minute delivery was due to the persuasion of rendering the 30-minute delivery as “slow” and “obsolete”. The idea behind the 10-minute delivery is to remove the time gap between making food and delivering at the doorstep. It can also be termed as “First Food Delivery Advantage” for Zomato since they are coming forward in delivering food under 10 minutes cutting down the time gap by 20 minutes.
The popular tea brand Chaayos is also a part of Zomato’s delivery plan, and they intend to speed up the delivery process by stationing their employees at several hubs or stations that Zomato plans to open next month. The tea will be distributed by the chain’s IoT equipment, which can do so in under three minutes. It is made fresh every time, and if this service continues to benefit the company and its customers, other chains will gladly join the company’s 10-minute delivery plan.
Will It Work? Zomato Faces Backlash.
After the company announced its delivery plan, netizens on Twitter flooded the platform with memes and statements for Zomato. People have also been commenting on the safety hazards of the delivery partners since they are cutting down the delivery time to 10 minutes to which Deepinder Goyal replied that they will constantly be educating their delivery agents regarding road safety. They’re also assuring that delivery agents aren’t under any pressure to speed up the delivery process and that they won’t be charged for late deliveries.
Zomato also announced that they’ll be delivering Maggi in under 10 minutes to which netizens have constantly been mocking the very idea of Zomato. The 10-minute delivery proposal is being criticized on social media because it may endanger delivery executives’ lives and lower restaurant meal quality at a time when Zomato has already been chastised for its food quality and delivery time.
Future Expectations of Zomato
- With Zomato’s stock burdened to the ground, investors aren’t exactly lining up to buy the newly-listed stock. Investors plan to wait till Zomato’s stock rises again and strengthens the core of the business and other offerings.
- Zomato’s 10-minute delivery plan can be a game-changer in the online food-ordering market. If Zomato Instant goes smoothly, the company plans to spread the service to other states, but this could take some time because the experiment would require a lot of research and development.
- With numerous acquisitions and stakeholding, Zomato will also be bringing its initiative Hyperpure to provide the best quality of ingredients and supplies to the restaurants to make the distribution process even easier.
- Zomato and Mukunda Foods will constantly be working on providing hot, sterile foods to the customers with their hubs and stations. While Mukunda Foods has been serving consumers with DosaMatic, RiCo, and other items, this might immensely assist Zomato in achieving its 10-minute delivery goal.
